This is a Byzantine Choir based out of Philadelphia, PA who did a concert of ancient Byzantine Chant and decided to wear the traditional choral uniforms of the Great Church prior to the fall of Constantinople.

This is a Byzantine Choir based out of Philadelphia, PA who did a concert of ancient Byzantine Chant and decided to wear the traditional choral uniforms of the Great Church prior to the fall of Constantinople.

Ah. That makes sense. I have heard that the Orthodox in Oxford have even done some Cathedral Rite services...dunno if they went as far as to make 12th century costumes.

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But for I am a man not textueel I wol noght telle of textes neuer a deel. (Chaucer, The Manciple's Tale, 1.131)

St Basil the Great (330-379 A.D.): “I think then that the one goal of all who are really and truly serving the Lord ought to be to bring back to union the churches who have at different times and in diverse manners divided from one another.”

It seems the Latvian archbishop sent a letter to Larry David to thank him for bringing their church to light. They never got so many inquiries as after that episode aired. LOL.

Btw, Fr. Alexander Garklavs, the OCA Chancellor, is the (adopted) grandson of the last Metropolitan of Latvia before the Soviet Occupation, Arb. John of Chicago of blessed memory. His adopted son, Fr. Sergei, btw recalls with greatest fondness (I think he actually said it was his favorite memory of this life) being huddled with the other refugees in Czechoslovakia, one step ahead of communist and nazis, in a barn around the Tikhvin Mother of God, bombs bursting all around them.

« Last Edit: October 27, 2009, 11:59:39 PM by ialmisry »

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Question a friend, perhaps he did not do it; but if he did anything so that he may do it no more.A hasty quarrel kindles fire,and urgent strife sheds blood.If you blow on a spark, it will glow;if you spit on it, it will be put out; and both come out of your mouth

Our priests in our parish have very little facial hair. One of our priests has a very finely trimmed goatee, and the other maintains a perpetual appearance of several day's growth. I assumed the "rule" was that you had to have some type of facial hair. Of course, the bishops usually have the all-out beards.

"The Conversion" is the seventy-fifth episode of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld. This was the 11th episode for the 5th season. It aired on December 16, 1993.

PlotGeorge converts to Latvian Orthodoxy in order to keep a girlfriend who would otherwise break up with him for their religious differences. He jokingly refers to his cheapness, remarking to her about ordering lobster, "You know? You are the first woman that I haven't thought about the price." Jerry finds a fungus cream in his girlfriend's medicine cabinet and, wondering what the cream might treat, convinces Elaine to ask her boyfriend, a podiatrist. Jerry mocks podiatrists by stating that they aren't real doctors and that even George could get into Podiatry school. It is later revealed that the cream was for Jerry's girlfriend's cat and somehow ends up in Elaine's medicine cabinet only to be discovered by her current boyfriend. Kramer meets a nun (Sister Roberta) at George's church but must break up with her when she decides to forsake her religion for him, due to Kramer having "kavorka" (the lure of the animal). Sister Roberta gives Kramer two toys as a gifts, one of them being a Slinky.

Interestingly, the writer of the episode, Bruce Kirschbaum, revealed later that he was unaware that the Latvian Orthodox church actually existed while writing the episode. His original intention was to have a fictitious sect.[1] Kirschbaum received many Thank You letters from the church for bringing attention to the denomination.

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“Find the door of your heart, and you will discover it is the door to the kingdom of God.” - St. John Chrysostom

Was there a Seinfeld episode where George converted? Why is he holding the chalice? Why is that guy in front of him putting his hands together like a RC?

The whole thing is what the a-religious think a Latvian Orthodox Church looks like. It actually looks like this:

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Question a friend, perhaps he did not do it; but if he did anything so that he may do it no more.A hasty quarrel kindles fire,and urgent strife sheds blood.If you blow on a spark, it will glow;if you spit on it, it will be put out; and both come out of your mouth

Ok, it's probably been 10 years since I saw the episode, but I'll try to do a summary. In that episode George found out that he couldn't date a certain girl that he really liked because she was Latvian Orthodox and he wasn't. So George went to a Latvian Orthodox Church and said that he wanted to join the Church, and they gave him a bunch of books to study, and (after about a week catechumenate) they had some type of ceremony. I don't recall much other than that.

Here is a portrait of Emperor John VIII Paleologos (reigned from 1425 to 1448) preserved the the Holy Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai wearing a similar hat:http://nauplion.net/CP-JOHN-VIII.html

Below is a funeral fresco of a man who died in 1445 and was buried in the Pantanassa monastery at Mystra in the Peleponese. The inscription on the fresco identifies him as "Manuel Laskaris Hatzikes, servant of the Despot Constantine". Note the similar hat. You'll also notice the eyes on the Icon are gouged out. The Turks did this to many icons at the time of the Ottoman conquest to protect themselves from the Evil Eye.

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If you're living a happy life as a Christian, you're doing something wrong.

It's a bit disturbing that the immediate reaction from some people when they saw the picture was that this must be some kind of innovation, an infiltration of foreign traditions into our holy tradition, when in reality these vestments were apart of our ancient tradition.

Yeah, you'd think that most Orthodox would have embraced the funny hat sub-culture. On a completely different note, why is it that when I look at the hats on the left, the first word that pops into my head is burrito?